MINELRES: News from SOVA Center

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Fri Feb 9 19:00:22 2007


Original sender: SOVA Center <[email protected]>


06.02.2007
 
Hate crimes in January, 2007 in Russia -
http://xeno.sova-center.ru/6BA2468/6BB41EE/8B0681A

In January, 2007 at least 39 people, 7 of them dead, became victims of
hate crimes in Russia. Moscow remained the center of racist and neo-nazi
violence: all of the murders and 11 more attacks were committed there.
Besides, bias motivated attacks were registered in St. Petersburg,
Nizhny Novgorod, Perm, Voronezh and Chita. The attack on a 20-year old
antifascist Ivan Jelin on January 14, 2007, in St. Petersburg, became
the high profile case of the month. 


----------------------
05.02.2007 

Russian Supreme Court sustained a verdict to a group of people accused
of a murder with a bias motive -
http://xeno.sova-center.ru/6BA2468/6BB41EE/8AEFB6B


On January 30, 2007, Russian Supreme Court sustained a verdict to a
group of people accused of a murder with a bias motive.

Seven people were accused of beating to death a 52-year old Armenian
Samvel Tadevosyan on August 9, 2005, in a local train coming to Moscow.
The murder was filmed with a mobile phone camera, and the accused didn�t
make any secret of the fact that they had intended to sell this video to
ultra-rightwing internet sites. 

As if destroying the myth of Russian jury being too indulgent towards
neo-nazis, the accused refused from being judged by the jury.

On November 9, 2006, the Moscow regional court found two of the
attackers, Petr Osipov and Anton Moskovskih, guilty of the murder with a
nationalistic motive. Besides, these two and 4 their "brothers-in-arms"
were found guilty of infliction of grievous bodily harm with a motive of
ethnic enmity (Article 112 of the Criminal Code) and robbery. All of
them were sentenced to 2-12 years of imprisonment.

The seventh defendant, the one who filmed the attack, was acquitted.

Both the defense and the Prosecutor�s office, not satisfied with the
acquittance of the seventh defendant, appealed the verdict. 

On January 30, 2007, the Supreme Court partly changed the verdict,
softening the sentences of three of the six convicts. The charges which
include hate crimes committed with a bias motive were not changed.

According to our data, in 2006 in Russia there were 31 verdicts of
conviction concerning hate crimes of violence, including 10 cases
involving the murder of 15 people. 
 
www.sova-center.ru

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